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Wednesday, December 21, 2016

2016 – Year in Review (Updated)

In our annual roundup last year, we took a page from Michael Kilkelly's handbook, he of the ArchSmarter website, and stated some goals for 2016. Let's revisit those and see how we did.

We stated a desire to formulate an Essential Revit Add-ons list. We were successful in this goal, and even presented sessions on this subject at RTC 2016 NA and SeaRUG.

We also wanted to start a series of articles detailing our own explorations with Dynamo andthe Revit API. These two we didn't get to. Maybe in the New Year...

We stated a desire to add more human interest stories, such as interviews, to the site. To this end, we chatted with Victoria Manolova of Xinaps. The resultant post was very well received and exceeded our expectations.

We'll also be posting an interview with Christian Proulx of BIM Track soon, perhaps even before year's end.

We expressed a desire to add content to LinkedIn. Shortly after making the resolution, we did write a single LinkedIn article, but we still haven't figured out a way in which LinkedIn would aid our efforts here on Revit Add-ons.

Lastly, we set post and page view goals for the first time. Our posts target was an average of one a day, or 366 in this, a leap year. We eclipsed that goal with a whopping 500!

Our page views target was 500,000, and we fell just a tad short with 488,869. Still, we're quite happy with that total.

Our post count was helped in particular by the Autodesk App Store adding version info and release notes for add-ins. This allowed us to identify and post about relatively significant updates to add-ins. Unfortunately, the App Store's system is far from perfect, and there are many false positives. Fortunately for you, we weed them out by comparing the version numbers with the best database we know of on the subject, our own. 😜

Both posts and page views were healthy improvements over last year, from 281 posts to 500, a jump of 219, and from 300,877 page views to 488,869, an increase of 187,992.

We had the pleasure of meeting ArchVision Founder/CEO Randall Stevens at RTC 2016 NA.

Lighting Analysts, makers of ElumTools, the first fully-integrated add-in lighting software for Revit, joined us as an advertiser in late summer. It's been a pleasure to work with Dave Speer, their Director of Sales & Marketing.

FenestraPRO joined us in the early fall. Their FenestraPRO Premium product enables architects to design energy efficient building façades to comply with building regulations and required performance. It's been a pleasure to work with their Marketing and Business Development Manager, Rachel Waite.

initial.aec, Autodesk Gold Partner and purveyor of the outstanding Revit productivity suite Pro Revit Tools, joined us a little over a year ago, but we've had a longstanding and very enjoyable relationship with their Marketing Director, Scott Zabilla.

PowerCAD is our newest advertiser, having joined us a couple of months ago. They're the authors of PowerCAD-PNL, a free 2D electrical interface for Revit MEP, and PowerCAD-M, for simplifying the build of your Revit electrical model. We've enjoyed working with their General Manager, Tim Newman.

At 3 years and 8 months, RevitWorks is our longest standing customer. They're authors of Door Factory PRO, among others. Door Factory is also available in a free LITE version. Alex Page, Director of RevitWorks, has always been a real treat to work with.

RTV Tools has been an outstanding supporter of our site for 2-1/2 years. They're the author of the popular RTV Xporter PRO product, as well as a number of others, all designed to help you get the most out of your BIM. And folks don't get much easier to work with than CEO Jason Howden. We had the pleasure of meeting him at RTC 2016 NA.

SPECtrum, authors of the SPECtrum Suite for rethinking content management, joined us a little under a year ago. Managing Partner of Sales and Marketing Robert Weygant has been painless to work with.

UNIFI Labs, authors of UNIFI, the essential cloud platform for creating, organizing, accessing, and managing building content, have been advertisers on Revit Add-ons for about 1-1/2 years, and Dana Marotto in Marketing has been a pleasure to work with.

We recognize products with Editor's Choice Awards for a number of reasons. It may be because an add-in solves a unique problem, or a common one in unique ways. It may be because it delivers exceptional value, or because it's exceptionally well thought-out and polished. Whatever the reasons, we were happy to recognize the following products this year.

AutoTURN for Revit delivers an easy to use swept path analysis tool for Revit users, allowing engineers, architects and other design professionals to perform simple turning maneuvers in the Revit environment.

CASE was a company that did some great things in the BIM community. And, for awhile there, it seemed like they were releasing a new add-in every month, usually for free. When WeWork acquired CASE in mid-2015, these CASE Apps were left in limbo.

Never fear though, because the CASE folks eventually released the apps as opensource, courtesy of WeWork.

Not too long after that, BIM One folded the CASE Apps, all now free, into their free BIM One Add-ins Manager, alongside their own free add-ins.

Entourage Workshop for Revit enables one to resymbolize and stylize RPC content. It has a fine level of control, allowing one to modify individual RPCs. Add unique artistic touches to your 3D views and renderings.

The free FilterPLUS add-in is designed to easily and immediately make your Revit experience better by replacing the native Filter tool with a custom-built, beefed-up filter. It allows users to not only filter by Category, but also by Family and Type.

IdeateApps is a set of Revit tools designed to increase productivity. Developed with specific tasks in mind, these tools address the challenges identified most often by Ideate Software customers who use Revit software every day. IdeateApps will decrease the time spent on common tasks and increase the accuracy of BIM data in a Revit model, helping to keep projects of all sizes and complexities on time and on budget.

The NBS Add-in is a free tool that enables you to browse thousands of consistent and high quality BIM objects from the award-winning NBS National BIM Library while working in Revit. Using the unique NBS plug-in you can drag and drop selected objects directly into your model.

Unlike the built-in Transfer Project Standards, the free Transfer Single add-in allows you to transfer just one item instead of entire categories, even to multiple files at one time. The add-in also enables you to copy additional elements like views, printing setups, section boxes, worksets, and even legends.

The free WorksetCreator enhances Revit by letting you mass change workset names with options like double click name editing, Find and Replace, and the ability to add a prefix. It also allows you to create a bunch of worksets in just a few clicks, from other projects or from text files and the like.

People's Choice Award Winners

Every year at this time we take a peek behind the curtain and see which posts received the most page views over the course of the year. The add-ins in the top-charting posts receive People's Choice Awards. Roundup and other aggregation types of posts are excluded, and only posts from the current year are considered.

Products in the list that also received Editor's Choice Awards include CASE Apps and BIMForge, both of which charted twice, as well as AutoTURN for Revit.

CASE was a company that did some great things in the BIM community. And, for awhile there, it seemed like they were releasing a new add-in every month, usually for free. When WeWork acquired CASE in mid-2015, these CASE Apps were left in limbo.

Never fear though, because the CASE folks eventually released the apps as opensource, courtesy of WeWork.

Not too long after that, BIM One folded the CASE Apps, all now free, into their free BIM One Add-ins Manager, alongside their own free add-ins.

AutoTURN for Revit delivers an easy to use swept path analysis tool for Revit users, allowing engineers, architects and other design professionals to perform simple turning maneuvers in the Revit environment.

CADTracer is designed to allow Revit users to replace CAD imports in projects with Revit Line work. CADTracer allows users to map Revit Line Styles with CAD Layers thereby achieving precise control of Line Weights and Line Styles. This tool can be used to convert 3D imports to 2D Line work and vice versa.

With the BIMsmith Forge interface, multiple manufacturers are brought together to form complete Revit assemblies, cut sheets, and specs. BIMsmith allows you to select and configure what you need quickly, without having to jump through the hurdles of merging multiple products or endless data entry.

The PolantisAPI application permits a direct connection from Revit to a huge object and texture database hosted on dedicated servers and in the cloud, all in .rvt and .rfa formats. It’s a great time-saver allowing AEC professionals to concentrate on what’s most important - conception and planning.

2D Placer is a tool for placing Detail Items and Annotation Symbols. The motivation for creating the 2D Placer is because the standard method for placing such components involves picking an item from a rather small list with all of the families and types expanded. It can take a while to find the family you are looking for if a bunch of families are loaded. 2D Placer provides a simple and useful interface for finding the 2D component that you want to place.

Sweets is a building product resource for design professionals. Sweets app for Revit allows the entire design team (architects, engineers, contractors and designers) to easily SEARCH, SELECT and ANNOTATE (TAG) manufacturer building product data directly into their projects.

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